Critics' Choice

THEATER

MIRACOLO d'AMORE.

Clowns and choruses, nudes and birdsong enliven Martha Clarke's surreal fantasy of love and violence, just off-Broadway.

AH, WILDERNESS! Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst perform to Broadway perfection in Eugene O'Neill's only comedy and, in repertory, his tragic Long Day's Journey into Night.

TELEVISION

AMERICAN MASTERS (PBS, debuting July 11, 9 p.m on most stations). The spotlight is on Lillian Gish in the first of this season's profiles. Upcoming in the eight weeks following: Duke Ellington, Augustus Saint Gaudens, the Algonquin Round Table.

AN EMPIRE OF REASON (PBS, July 13, 10 p.m. on most stations). The big guns of TV news report on the battle to ratify the Constitution as if it were a breaking story. Walter Cronkite anchors for the "Continental Television Network," and William F. Buckley Jr. and Phil Donahue do their thing.

NEWHART (CBS, Mondays, 9 p.m. EDT). One of the season's best comedy series makes for some of the funniest summer reruns. On the July 11 episode: Larry, Darryl and Darryl as adoptive dads.

CINEMA

COMMISSAR. A tough officer of the Soviet Army gets pregnant and, in the company of a Jewish family, finds humanity. This brave, Soviet-made parable was banned for 20 years. Its liberation is glasnost's greatest gift to movies.

BULL DURHAM. A "natural" ballplayer (Tim Robbins) is a natural disaster to his coaches in the arts of baseball (Kevin Costner) and love (Susan Sarandon). But all are fun to watch: plenty of smart talk, laughs and warm sex.

BIG. A twelve-year-old makes a wish to be big -- and wakes up the next day as Tom Hanks in a delightful comedy-fantasy about youth and age, and the differences between them.

MUSIC

JOHN CAFFERTY AND THE BEAVER BROWN BAND:

ROADHOUSE (Scotti Brothers) A sure cure for the summertime blues. Exalted variations on the kind of tunes you can hear floating out the open door of any boardwalk joint on any muggy night.

KEITH JARRETT: STILL LIVE (ECM). Ravishing standards like Come Rain or Come Shine and upbeat thrillers like Charlie Parker's Billie's Bounce: dazzling jazz piano from one of the best.

BOB DYLAN: DOWN IN THE GROOVE (Columbia). Not a major statement from our most generative songwriter, but a raspy, relaxed session with four originals and some surprising remakes (Silvio, Death Is Not the End, Rank Strangers to Me).

BOOKS

SPENCE + LILA by Bobbie Ann Mason (Harper & Row; $12.95). The author of Shiloh and Other Stories offers a lean novel about a Kentucky farmer and his ailing wife, a love story so pure and enduring that it might have been carved with a jackknife on an old tree.

OSCAR AND LUCINDA by Peter Carey (Harper & Row; $18.95). An Australian novelist turns in a shimmering fantasy of gambling and glassmaking, held together by the struts of 19th century history and the mullions of painstaking detail.